That's ridiculous. There's no obligation for anyone to bring something to market regardless of how far along it is.
After I read the article:
Still not persuaded. It reads like motivated reasoning, the person doesn't like things not getting released and says that governments should step in. There's some mention of taxes and lost work, but nothing tht holds water.
As an example: if it cost you $100M to make a film and you write that off you could reduce your tax burden by as much, netting a $15M lower tax bill if your rate was 15%.
By contrast if you release it you've no guarantee of that $15M, especially once promotion and other costs are factored in. If it's a trash movie that'll also damage the firm's reputation---something that's tough to quantify but no less real.
That's not great, but its I wouldn't want to live in a society where that was criminal.
Then there's this:
> nobody who did any sort of work on a project that consumed years of their lives will ever be able to point to it as evidence of what sort of work they’re capable of doing
That's the status quo in most jobs. Things don't ship all the time.
It's a bummer, yeah, but that's it.